A couple of things spring to mind between the two. The first being, the materials (wall and floor) in the photograph have a lot more reflectivity to them than that of your rendering. Secondly its hard to compare apples to apples because the view angle/location is different which will affect perceived reflections and shadows. And lastly take a look at Physical camera settings. In a typical interior photograph, if the interior is balance the exterior, being brighter, gets a little blown out (as visible in the photograph above).

I think you have it pretty close. The only change I would make would be to take the Bump map that you are using and edit it in photoshop with contrast to the point its black and white. Save this as your material Spec map.

In vray material, in the reflection section of the material editor click on the M next to Filter. In the drop down menu under the image select TexBitmap. Then in the File area insert your spec map.

This will filter out the grooved areas so they are not reflective.

And the second issue is that in your example there is nothing being reflected. In the example image above they have the doors reflecting in the floor which helps define the reflection of the wood.

Rob

Can you post screenshots of the Material Panels for the material in question?

@john2 said:

@Panixia, your screenshot didn't get posted here.

I believe this is what he meant.

I have to say, the first image you posted looks pretty close to white to me. But then again I am looking at it from an uncalibrated lcd screen. If you aren't getting the desired result from the render then its probably easiest to fix in post processing using color corrections.

Is the terrain grouped by itself?

So first off, you need to download IES files. Some work better than others its just a bit of trial and error.

You can check out this program http://www.photometricviewer.com/?i=1
It will allow you to get a sense of the light produced by the IES file.

Then in SketchUP go to the VRay menu and add an IES light. Place it in your model where you would like it. Then right-click on it, go to the bottom where is say Vray -> edit light. In the menu, go to options and input the location of the IES file in the File box. Next increase the power to something like 1,000,000 to see if it works.

Rob

If you edit the VFS.RB file with a text editor and put: require 'sketchup.rb' on the first line.

I typically add a very subtle bump (wavey) to my window glass to simulate the inconsistency in typical window glass. That might add some reflection to the view as well.

Vray trials only allow for one light.

Are you by any chance using a trial copy of Vray?

Are you lighting this with an HDRI Sky? If so then your HDRI is probably higher than your model, so either drop the HDRI or raise your model.

I believe it is due to the fact that the trial of Vray only allows 2 lighting elements in a scene.

Ultimately it comes down to personal preference.

Typically if you have a lighting fixture, you would try to use an IES light to produce the most accurate lighting pattern for that fixture.

Rectangle lights are good for when large swaths of light are required in one single direction, lots of people use them to simulate the exterior light coming in through a window, or for product renders as studio "softbox" lighting.

Sphere and Omni lights will produce, as the name suggests, a surrounding light, similar to a bare bulb.

My best suggestion would be to make a simple scene and just play with each type of light to see how it behaves.

Robert

Can you post an image of your Brick Diffuse and Displacement maps? Perhaps your material settings for it as well?

Perhaps doing this in photoshop would be better, or add an actual grass face for the ground (see Skatter). The shadow will remain flat and look like its sitting on top of the grass from the HDRI image.

I believe thats what Andybot was getting at. If you don't have thickness to your glass you don't need the refraction layer at all.

You should do a search for VRay Studio setups.

Check out this video, its based on VRAY for 3Ds but the concepts should work for VraySU as well.
http://viscorbel.com/studio-lighting-setup/

Rob

You could also try creating a "Sketchup 2 Sided material" the outside face would be 100% transparent and the inside face would be the same material as the walls.

We need a little more information than that. Can you post a screenshot of your material settings?